CIEE Volunteer Day - Spring 2018

On a beautiful bright day, after so much blessings of rain that have occurred lately. We arrived at 9am to the children at the center having their breakfast and their volunteers helping them out. This Saturday was the schedule volunteer day hosted by CIEE at Gamodubu Child Trust Center, with the study abroad advisors as they visited our study center in Gaborone.

Group Site Visit
The group of study abroad advisors visits different universities and get to understand the CIEE center in those universities. The visit is an excellent way to promote our program and University of Botswana as a host institution to study abroad administrators and faculty at key CIEE sending institutions. These institutions include schools who currently send students here or those who are considering approving the Botswana program. The aim of the visit is to convince participants that they should be sending students to the Botswana program, we took the along on our volunteer day.

Gamodubu Child Trust Center
Gamodubu Child Care Trust is a centre for orphaned and vulnerable children who are mostly also living with HIV and Aids. The Centre offers an out of school program that includes, but is not limited to feeding and also ensuring the children take their medication and have access to regular check-ups. Gamodubu is a Childcare that looks after 200 orphaned children, most of them with HIV. The center was open in 2005 and it’s located in the small village of Gamodubu in Kweneng District.

Shirley Madikwe is the founder of Gamodubu Child Care Trust, one beautiful soul as she is a mother to many children as well as a sister and daughter to Gamodubu. Madikwe has made a tremendous impact in the lives of many young people. The Child Care Trust began simply out of a realisation of the deep need in the village. Madikwe began feeding desperate children out of her own resources at her own home. Together with volunteers, Madikwe washes the children’s clothes and prepares their lunch so that when they return, they find food ready. After eating, she makes sure that all the children study and do their homework. The centre also takes care of babies and toddlers who need a lot of attention. The babies are bathed, fed and taken care of daily. The center gives those children accommodation, who have  to walk 12 kilometres to and from their villages to school daily. The center has a poultry and vegetable garden.

Past donations

1. The BIHL Trust continues to support the Gamodubu Child Care Trust in its daily activities and its projects such as the construction of the Multi Purpose hall.
2. Zion Christian Church donated food and toiletries to Gamodubu Child Care Trust.
3. Letshego donated P71 000 with a  fun-filled day , football and food.

Introductions were exchanged and the owner explained more about the center, how many children it accommodates, their different ages and the type of help they get from now and then.

Activities of the day: (everyone was divided into different groups together with the center’s children and the staff)

CLEANING
The cleaning crew helped with picking up litter around the center and putting them into trash plastic bags. This activity had an educational twist to it and taught students how to recycle, how to store different types of trash and the importance of not littering. After collecting all the litter, the activity leader taught their group how to make Paper Mache with recycled paper.

EDUCATIONAL GAMES (indoor)
The group did games such as the alphabet hunt: looking for hidden alphabets in the library and making words from them, book reading, crafting sentences using different letters the group leader provided, making a FIRST AID kit and memory game.

COOKING
The kitchen had more fun than just cooking, while the group was waiting for food to cook, they had chats in between and the older kids telling us about their day to day life and our students sharing their experiences and leadership skills.

PAINTING
The crew painted the playground and the soon to be open day care center while making sure that the activity is more of educational aswell as fun. In between we had chats about what their favourite subjects at school, what they want to be when they grow up and what sports they like.

LAUNDRY
We helped to wash the uniforms of children at the center and discussing leaderships skills with the older kids who were helping out.

ACTIVE GAMES (outdoor)
Outside we had to groups playing variety of games, soccer and some local games that the kids at the center taught us. The day was a success, a day full of fun games, educational activities, cooking, cleaning and motivational talks. At the end of the day we presented donations to the center.

Thank you Gamodubu Child Care Trust, till we meet again!